Organization

The W3C is dedicated to promoting Internet standards that encourage interoperability and openness. Popular standards they have helped forge include HTML, P3P, and XML.

Location

Domain

International

Technical Scope

Membership Types

Internal Organizations

External Organizations

Standards Track Maturity Levels

Standards Track View Notes

Standards Track Participation Notes

Other Tracks

Standards View Notes

Patent Policy

"Whenever possible, technical decisions should be made unencumbered by intellectual property right (IPR) claims. To this end, W3C discloses to the entire Membership which organizations have made IPR claims about a particular technology, as well as the details of those claims where they have been provided."

In September 2001, there was a large public outcry to the announcement that the W3C was going to permit standards including patented intellectual property requiring Reasonable and Non-discriminatory (RAND) royalty payments by implementors to owners of the patents. In response, the W3C changed its position to only support unencumbered Royalty-Free (RF) use of intellectual property for which patent claims are known, whenever possible.

The Patent Policy Working Group is said to be considering exceptions to the Royalty-Free framework where RAND licensing would be considered.